British propaganda during World War II

British propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

took various forms. Using a wide variety of media, it called for actions needed for the war, such as production and proper behavior in the blackout, painted a dark picture of the Axis powers, and praised the Allies.

Cinema

"The story of the British cinema in the Second World War is inextricably linked with that of the Ministry of Information." Formed on 4 September 1939, the day after Britain's declaration of war, the Ministry of Information (MOI) was the central government department responsible for publicity and propaganda in the Second World War. It was the Ministry's function to "present the national case to the public at home and abroad". The MOI was keenly aware of the value of commercially produced entertainment films in furthering the national cause generally and maintained close contact with film makers:

The Ministry both advised the producers on the suitability of subjects which they had suggested, and proposed subjects which we thought would do good overseas. Whenever the Ministry had approved a subject we gave every help to the producer in obtaining facilities to make the film.

As a result, the typical British war film attempts to construct a gripping suspense story which at the same time conveys propaganda ideas in support of the Allied cause. Kenneth Clark, as head of the Films Division of the MOI, argued in 1940 that the public must be convinced of German brutality, stating "we should emphasize wherever possible the wickedness and evil perpetrated in the occupied countries". Subsequently, the Home Planning Committee felt it essential to portray fully "the evil things which confront us... to fortify the will to continue the struggle". By 1942, the fear of invasion (as depicted in films such as Went the Day Well?
Went the Day Well?
"Went the Day Well?" is a British war film produced by Ealing Studios in 1942 as unofficial propaganda. It tells of how an English village is taken over by German paratroopers . Made during the war, it reflects the greatest potential nightmares of many Britons of the time, although the threat of...

) had receded, and film makers began to turn to the brutal reality of life in occupied countries. The Day Will Dawn
The Day Will Dawn
The Day Will Dawn, released in the U.S. as The Avengers, is a 1942 war film set in Norway during World War II. It stars Ralph Richardson, Deborah Kerr, Hugh Williams and Griffith Jones, and was directed by Harold French from a script written by Anatole de Grunwald, Patrick Kirwan and Terence...

(1942) was a film about the Norwegian resistance, while Uncensored told the story of the Belgian resistance. Tomorrow We Live depicts the French Resistance and the heroism of ordinary French civilians, while One of Our Aircraft Is Missing
One of Our Aircraft is Missing
One of Our Aircraft is Missing is a 1942 British war film, the fourth collaboration between the British writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and the first film they made under the banner of The Archers...

(1942) shows Dutch civilians risking their lives to help a group of British airmen back to England.

Films were also imported. Churchill ordered the entire sequence of Frank Capra

Frank Capra

Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...

's Why We Fight
Why We Fight
Why We Fight is a series of seven war information training films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S...

to be shown the public.

Newsreels

Newsreels had particular effect on American audiences, the dome of St. Paul's over the ruins being a particularly significant image.

Posters

Posters were widely used in the propaganda campaigns. Their content ranged from simple instructions to pure motivational intent.

Freedom Is In Peril Defend It With All Your Might

This poster was one of a series of three issued as a motivational poster by the British Government in 1939. The other two in the series were, Your Courage Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory and Keep Calm and Carry On

Keep Calm and Carry On

Keep Calm and Carry On was a poster produced by the British government in 1939 during the beginning of the Second World War, intended to raise the morale of the British public in the event of invasion. Seeing only limited distribution, it was little known...

Leaflets

Leaflets were widely used for propagandizing enemy-held terriotory, by dropping them from airplanes. As early as the "phoney war", pamphlets were being dropped. On the anniversary of Hitler's premature declaration of victory against the Soviet Union, in 1941, copies of the Völkischer Beobachter
Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...

reporting the story were dropped on Germany.

One Italian one invoked Garibaldi, who had said that Italy's future was linked with Great Britain's, declaring the bombings the "curse of Garibaldi."

Books

A few weeks after D-Day, crates of books were landed in Normandy, to be distributed to French booksellers; an equal number of American and British efforts were included.

Radio

Radio was widely used, with broadcasts in 23 languages; it proved to be rather simpler to the occupied countries than to Germany itself.

Edward R. Murrow

Edward R. Murrow

Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...

's broadcasts of the Blitz were particularly useful in propagandizing the United States, because of his calm, factual, and unopininated manner; he received full rein and facilities, even access to Churchill. His reports of British courage and tenacity helped stimulate hope.

Transmitters in England would also pose as broadcasting from Germany, where mostly factual reports would be studded with lies.

Resistance

During the "phoney war", the book Why Britain is At War sold a hundred thousand copies.

In 1940 in particular, Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

made many calls for the British to fight on, and for British units to fight until they died rather than submit. His calls for fight to victory inspired a hardening of public opinion. Determination raised the numbers of the Home Guard

Home Guard

-Military:*British Home Guard*Combat Groups of the Working Class *Confederate Home Guard, during the American Civil War*Croatian Home Guard and Imperial Croatian Home Guard*Danish Home Guard...

and inspired a willingness to fight to the last ditch, in a manner rather similar to Japanese determination, and the slogan "You can always take one with you" was used in the grimmest times of the war.

Victories

British victories were announced to the public for morale purposes, and broadcast to Germany for purposes of undermining morale.

Even during Dunkirk, an optimistic spin was put on how the soldiers were eager to return.

When the U-boat commander Günther Prien

Günther Prien

Lieutenant Commander Günther Prien was one of the outstanding German U-boat aces of the first part of the Second World War, and the first U-boat commander to win the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Under Prien's command, the submarine sank over 30 Allied ships totaling about...

vanished with his submarine U-47, Churchill personally informed the House of Commons, and radio broadcasts to Germany asked, "Where is Prien?" until Germany was forced to acknowledge his loss.

The turn of the war made BBC's war commentaries much more stirring.

Work

Propaganda was deployed to encourage people to volunteer for onerous or dangerous war work, such as factories or Home Guard

Home Guard

-Military:*British Home Guard*Combat Groups of the Working Class *Confederate Home Guard, during the American Civil War*Croatian Home Guard and Imperial Croatian Home Guard*Danish Home Guard...

.

Male conscription ensured that general recruitment posters were not needed, but specialist services posters did exist, and many posters aimed at women such as Land Army, or ATS. Films and posters encouraged women to go to work in munitions factories.

Posters were also targeted at increasing production. Pictures of the Armed Forces often called for support from civilians, and posters juxtaposed civilian workers and soldiers to urge that the forces were relying on them and instruct them in the importance of their role.

People were encouraged to spend holidays assisting at harvest, even when they were also encouraged to stay home.

Evacuation of children

Posters urged children to be sent from London. Both pamphlets and posters urged that evacuated children not be brought back. Many were, in fact, brought back during the "phoney war", and the government redoubled efforts to persuade them to let the children stay.

Others praised those who took such children in, such as depicting a housewife in a line of uniformed women as she welcomes children.

Blackout

Poster enumerated what to do when traveling in a blackout. Flashlight should be shone down, to avoid blinding people. Care should be taken while crossing roads. When getting off a train, check that the door opened on the platform.

Preventing waste

Propaganda was deployed to encourage economizing in travel, saving waste paper, and obeying rationing. The propaganda film They Also Serve dealt with housewives' conservation efforts. People were also called to "make do" so that raw materials would be available for the war effort. Even an unattended kettle, boiling over, was waste. This was to be applied at work, as well, even though the firm was paying for wasted fuel.

Recipes were spread for cooking efficiently and nutritiously on the restricted diet with many substitutions. The Ministry of Food urged that it was not clever to take more than your share. While bread was not rationed, wholemeal bread was encouraged. Propaganda also publicized that pregnant women could get orange juice and vitamin pills by bringing their ration books and medical certificate to the Food Office. Waste paper required recycling to save shipping. The Squander Bug campaign simply urged spending less.

Because the war limited other options, the bus system was overloaded, and posters urged that people walk for short distances, to ease the burden. For train journeys, posters urged consideration of whether the trip was necessary and the importance of food and ammunition carried by train.

Posters also encouraged growing gardens. The difficulties of the Battle of the Atlantic led to the slogan "Dig for Victory!" Every garden could be used for this purpose. Because potatoes could be grown this way, the character "Potato Pete" was created to remind people that potatoes did not take up room on ships. Radio broadcasts urged that it be a form of recreation, not wartime sacrifice.

Salvage operations were depicted as transforming scrap to weapons. An exhibition, "Private Scrap" was created to demonstrate the uses of scrap and underscore the link between civilian efforts and the military forces. Iron railings and aluminum pots were targeted. Housewives' salvage efforts were presented militaristically, even depicting weapons by coming from women.

Axis

British propaganda, like American propaganda, presented the war as an issue of good versus evil, a factor that allowed them to rouse the population to fight a just war, and use themes of resistance and liberation to occupied countries.

Anti-German

Much was made of Hitler's dictatorship as the government. Germany was treated as a particular font of evil within the Axis, and a greater threat than Japan and Italy. Churchill presented Hitler as the central issue of the war. The Germans were also presented as evil, with some stating that the concentration camps would not have been possible on French or British soil.

The sinking of the SS Athenia

SS Athenia

The S.S. Athenia was the first British ship to be sunk by Nazi Germany in World War II.-Description:Athenia was built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Ltd., and was launched at Govan, Scotland in 1923. She was built for Anchor-Donaldson Ltd.'s route between Britain and Canada...

, killing civilians including Americans, on the first day of the war was widely exploited as demonstrating that the U-boat was the same instrument of terror as in World War I; the Germans attempted to counter it by claiming the British had sunk the ship themselves to blacken Germany.

The film Men of the Lightship was created to foment anti-German feeling; not only do the Germans attack a lightship, not traditionally regarded as a proper target, but machine-gun the survivors in the water, so that only one lives. Posters depicted Germans in a sinister light. Despite the encouragement it might give the enemy and that it did not inspire calm, propaganda shifted from playing down raids to playing them up, to inspire hatred of the enemy, and sympathy with neutrals. Atrocity reports were presented both as summaries of known facts and news reports as they occurred.

Alternate history novels depicted Nazi invasions of Great Britain as a form of "cautionary tales". Up until 1943, these were grim tales, presenting British victims; after that, a more heroic note increased.

The instant—and unauthorized—rejection of the peace terms of Hitler's July 19, 1940 speech by Sefton Delmer

Sefton Delmer

Denis Sefton Delmer was a British journalist and propagandist for the British government. Fluent in German, he became friendly with Ernst Röhm who arranged for him to interview Adolf Hitler in the 1930s...

on the BBC produced a great impact on Germany; Goebbels believed it had to show governmental inspiration, and while propaganda efforts were made to talk the British around, the German press were instructed to attack the rejection. The speed of the rejection unquestionably led the great impact, which authorization would have prevented; this produced consternation in the government, as the effect was desirable, but they did not know whether such a spokesman would again happen to say what the government wanted.

Anti-Japanese

Although Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

found the disaster at Singapore and the loss of Burma, Hong Kong and Malaya humiliating, Brendan Bracken, the minister of information regarded it as impossible to rouse the British to sentiments similar to those the British public held toward Germany, as the Japanese were across the globe and the Germans there, and his views prevailed.

The Pacific war was regarded as peripheral by most British, but anti-Japanese sentiment

Anti-Japanese sentiment

Anti-Japanese sentiment involves hatred, grievance, distrust, dehumanization, intimidation, fear, hostility, and/or general dislike of the Japanese people and Japanese diaspora as ethnic or national group, Japan, Japanese culture, and/or anything Japanese. Sometimes the terms Japanophobia and...

was used in one African recruiting poster. Posters depicting British and Australian unity often featured a Japanese figure.

The British attack on Burma was taken chiefly so that the British could say that they had taken back their colonial possessions with their own armies. It was so neglected in news and propaganda that it was termed the "forgotten army." Similar campaigns were conducted in Malaya and Singapore, for the same reason, even though military officials preferred joining forces with the American campaigns.

A pamphlet for soldiers, "The Japanese in Battle" set out to debunk the myth of the Japanese superman after the initial wave of Japanese victories.

The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...

supported the bombing of Japan on the grounds of the atrocities committed against downed airmen and in China.

Anti-Italian

Italy's entrance to the war was derided for their having waited until victory looked secure, but the anti-Italian feeling never reached the pitch of anti-German sentiment.

Allies

Propaganda fomented support for allies in the war, first for the European nations and then for the USSR and USA, with support for the Commonwealth being pervasive. Promoting disunity was, in fact, a major desire of Axis forces. Depictions of forces included Malays, West Africans, and Soviet. Many posters depicted soldiers from different countries, such as Australian and British, many Commonwealth countries, varied occupied countries, and many Allied countries, or British and American sailors. Merchant ships were used to dramatize Lend-Lease. Resistance movements were also depicted, sometimes with Allied agents or receiving message from them.

Soviet Union

Prior to the attack on the Soviet Union, it was treated with hostility, as when a paper explained that Tchaikovsky was a product of Tsarist, not Bolshevist, Russia, but the attack changed treatment to favorable.

The British Ministry of Information put out a booklet on countering ideological fears of Bolshevism, including claims that the Red Terror was a figment of Nazi imagination—which inspired George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

to leave the BBC and write Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...

, which was suppressed by the Ministry until the end of the war. Until long after the war, the British supported the Soviet claim that the Nazis had staged the Katyn Massacre

Katyn massacre

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...

.

The Battle of Stalingrad

Battle of Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...

received particular attention as a great victory.

To occupied countries

The V Campaign targeted the occupied countries, using "V" to represent the French word for "victory" and the Flemish for "freedom", and the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)

The Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1804–08. This symphony is one of the most popular and best-known compositions in all of classical music, and one of the most often played symphonies. It comprises four movements: an opening sonata, an andante, and a fast...

for broadcasts. It alarmed Germans until Goebbels conceived of trying to reframe it as a German victory.

British propaganda was circulated in occupied countries through the efforts of the underground movements.

To the United States

The British Security Coordination

British Security Coordination

British Security Coordination was a covert organization set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service in May 1940 upon the authorization of Winston Churchill.-Operation:...

was created to propagandize the United States to enter the war, and presented massive amounts of propaganda which they successfully concealed as newsreports, not one of them having been "rumbled" as a propaganda piece during the war.

Careless talk

Careless talk propaganda discouraged talking about sensitive material where it could be overheard by spies, showing either an Axis eavesdropper or depicting a death caused by such information leaking. It was also intended to prevent morale sapping rumors from spreading. The first posters were illustrated by a comic artist. After concluding that such talk was not a serious source of intelligence, and would often be dismissed as a plant, the campaign was not increased.

This also was the theme of the film The Next of Kin
The Next of Kin
The Next of Kin, also known as Next of Kin, is a 1942 World War II propaganda film produced by Ealing Studios.The film was originally commissioned by the British War Office as a training film to promote the government propaganda message that "Careless talk costs lives"...

.

Keep Mum

Originating in a 1940 campaign with the catchphrase ‘Be Like Dad, Keep Mum', the best-known image from this campaign is the 1942 poster 'Keep Mum, She's Not So Dumb' by the architect and artist Gerald Lacoste. It depicts a glamorous blonde woman

Dumb blonde

The blonde stereotype, the stereotypical perception of blond-haired women, has two aspects. On one hand, over the history, blonde hair in women has been considered attractive and desirable...

reclining, and officers from each branch of the Armed Forces about her talking to each other. It is implied that the officers are talking military secrets, on the (wrongful) assumption that the woman is only a "dumb blonde" and so will not pass these secrets onto the enemy.

The campaign was issued in 1942 to all ranks, with this particular image intended for mess

Mess

A mess is the place where military personnel socialise, eat, and live. In some societies this military usage has extended to other disciplined services eateries such as civilian fire fighting and police forces. The root of mess is the Old French mes, "portion of food" A mess (also called a...

es and other places where officers met. At the end of May, Advertiser's Weekly noted that ‘sex appeal' had been introduced in the form of a beautiful spy, who they insisted on ‘christening Olga Polovsky after the famous song'. In June 1941 they further noted that, having covered public house talk, wayside conversations with strangers, and ‘harmless chat' with friends when on leave, the government believed they had identified ‘the major problem' at last. The campaign was to make a direct appeal along the lines of ‘Cherchez la femme

Cherchez la femme

Cherchez la femme is a French phrase which literally means "look for the woman." The implication is that a man behaves out of character or in an otherwise inexplicable manner because he is trying to cover up an affair with a woman, or trying to impress or gain favor with a woman.The expression...

', as a reminder that ‘when in the company of a beautiful woman, remember that beauty may conceal brains'. Service personnel seemed particularly ready to disclose their station and line of work.

Careless Talk Costs Lives

The best known images from this series are by Fougasse

Fougasse (cartoonist)

Cyril Kenneth Bird, pen name Fougasse was a British cartoonist best known for his editorship of Punch magazine and his iconic World War II warning propaganda posters....

, depicting people giving away secrets in everyday situations (e.g. sitting on the bus, not seeing caricatures of Hitler, Goebbels and Goering sitting behind them).

External links

National Archives' Art of War: Propaganda

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